TNAG-1391-FCO40-1863-Future-of-Hong-Kong-briefing-for-meetings-and-visits-1985 — Page 9

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briefs, revised if necessary to take into account any comments received from Departments in reply to the scene-setting letter.

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The steering brief - as I think we might go back to calling the 'general brief" - will be the vital brief, and should be drafted in such a way that the Prime Minister need not read any of the other briefs, although they will be available for consultation if required. For summits with Community countries there will also be a separate steering brief covering Community matters. For the main subjects likely to come up at Head of Government level, the steering brief should be cast in the format set out in the annex to this letter, excluding the press line. All the more minor subjects which are unlikely to be more than briefly touched upon at Head of Government level. eg at the reports on the bilateral in the plenary should be covered, as at present, in a separate section at the end headed "Other Subjects Which May Be Raised". In this section, each subject should be covered in a single paragraph setting out pithily which side may raise it and what each side's objectives are. As the steering brief is the most important brief, it should in the case of the major Western European summits be cleared (as at present) through Bryan Cartledge's MISC 76 Committee and it may occasionally be worthwhile to set up similar ad hoc arrangements for other important summits (eg Anglo-American).

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jd. Subject briefs should as at present be restricted to

subjects likely to come up substantively at Head of Government level. Departments should, again as at present, provide their own Ministers with separate briefing on subjects only likely to come up substantively at their own tete-a-tetes with their opposite numbers. The individual subject briefs for the Prime Minister should normally need to do no more than set out the background on the subject in question, the objectives and arguments will have been included in the steering brief.

Multilateral Summits

For European Councils, Economic Summits and Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings, the briefing should as far as possible follow a similar pattern to that for full-scale bilteral summits. The steering brief should follow the format set out in the annex for the main subjects on the agenda, and then have a separate section with brief paragraphs on the more minor subjects which may come up. The steering brief will also need a further section listing any bilaterals in the margins of the main meeting and describing briefly the objectives for each. As in the case of bilateral summit steering briefs, the steering brief for multilateral summits will normally need to be looked at by a Cabinet Office Committee - EQS in the case of the European Council Steering brief.

meeting

Meeting

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For the longer and more complicated multilateral summit

especially the Commonwealth Heads of Government there will probably need to be rather more subject briefs. For instance, most if not all the subjects mentioned in the steering brief under "Other Subjects Which May Be Raised"

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/will probably